Oliveira: Hanging on to hope
Virginia Tech tragedy highlights value of human connection
We need to feel we play a role in society and have some affect on the lives of others. Cho Seung-hui did not feel that sense, which caused him to make his mark in the worst way possible.
By Patrick de Oliveira (Contact)
Friday, April 20th, 2007
On Monday morning, Cho Seung-hui left his dorm room at Virginia Tech with two handguns and proceeded to brutally murder 32 people. He then committed suicide.
School shootings have happened before. Columbine and the University of Texas in 1966 are both well-known examples. What is troubling about school massacres similar to Virginia Tech is their apparent nihilism — their lack of adherence to any belief or value. When a student opens fire against his colleagues there is no struggle against authority attached, no idealistic answer in the stains of blood.
In the case of school shootings there is no relationship, healthy or twisted, between the victims and the shooter. Even hate, when directed at someone, recognizes that person’s individuality, but Cho did not hate those 32 people as individuals. He was simply indifferent to them, something even sadder.
There is only the sickening feeling that nothing will ever be enough to comprehend that act. Every single person connected to the 33 killed will have to live with that feeling forever.
The tragedy of school massacres is that there is a loss of value in the lives of the victims and murderers alike. The victim’s life loses value as soon as he or she is shot indiscriminately. As the bullets pierce through the victim’s flesh, he or she is deprived of individual significance, becoming one in the mass of 32.
A crime of passion has an exquisite human element; there is some kind of connection between victim and assailant. But, in the case of school shootings there is no relationship, healthy or twisted, between the victims and the shooter. Even hate, when directed at someone, recognizes that person’s individuality, but Cho did not hate those 32 people as individuals. He was simply indifferent to them, something even sadder.
The murderer’s life, as a part of humanity, lost its value long before he committed the atrocity. To engage in this kind of mindless destruction a person must first lose his or her sense of belonging – both to the community and to the overall human existence. That is why at the end the shooter turned the gun at himself.
People across the political spectrum will try to politicize this tragedy. Arguments for both stronger and more lenient gun control laws are already being made. However, these are not silver bullet solutions. Although school massacres are relatively rare, the phenomenon is almost exclusively American – countries with both more liberal or stricter gun laws do not experience them in the same degree.
Even if we were to classify these individuals as mentally ill, it still does not explain the geographic concentration of the tragedies. Perhaps it is the local sociological expression of a greater world trend of violence, which includes the high suicide rates in former Soviet states and the mindless violence perpetrated in large cities in Brazil.
There is always a search for meaning in the midst of a tragedy. What caused Cho Seung-hui to brutally murder these 32 individuals? The paradox when of these nihilistic actions is that they do not have a nihilistic origin in itself — something meaningful caused Cho to act as if nothing were meaningful. Something went incredibly wrong in his relationship with human beings; something that made the bond that intrinsically connects humans to each other — and forms the wonderful and diverse human race — break. Cho did not feel part of this patchwork.
Perhaps through this tragedy we can learn to value, celebrate and strengthen the connection we share with our fellow humans, and hope that by doing that we prevent further tragedies. That is all that is left: Hope.
Patrick Luiz Sullivan De Oliveira is a Belo Horizonte, Brazil, sophomore in journalism and history.
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